Jet continues to dominate Indian skies

Jet Airways’ dominance of the domestic market continued in March but its share declined marginally when compared with figures for the month of February, as per the air traffic data released by the civil aviation ministry.

Jet had 26 per cent of the domestic market share as compared with 26.1 per cent in February. It was followed by Kingfisher (23 per cent), which saw a significant rise from its February standing of 22.7 per cent. The share of government-owned NACIL also grew from 17.2 per cent in February to 17.8 per cent in March.

No-frills carriers IndiGo and SpiceJet followed with 14.7 and 11.9 per cent respectively.

The number of passengers carried by domestic airlines in the first quarter this year rose by over 20 per cent as compared with the corresponding period last year. These include passengers carried by non-scheduled operators. In all, 120.32 lakh passengers were carried between January to March this year, as against 99.82 lakh during the same period last year.

The total number of domestic passengers carried by the scheduled airlines in the first quarter of 2010 was 118.53 lakh with Jet carrying 30.54 lakh, Kingfisher 26.84 lakh and Air India (Domestic) 20.90 lakh.

The total number of domestic passengers carried by the scheduled airlines in the first quarter of 2009 was 98.22 lakh. For the month of March this year, scheduled airlines carried 39.03 lakh passengers.

The overall on-time performance (OTP) of scheduled domestic airlines for March was 86.4 per cent while OTP for foreign carriers was 76.3 per cent.